Brazilian GP - Friday - Practice Session 2 Report

Hamilton stays on top

Lewis Hamilton (1:14.026) again set the pace in the second session of free practice for Sunday's Brazilian GP, the McLaren driver finishing up quarter of a second clear of championship-chasing Sebastian Vettel (1:14.300).

The tyres that Hamilton finished the session on appeared to be significantly blistered, however, but that may not be significant given that the track temperature today was in the high forties, whereas the weather forecast on race day is for cooler weather and heavy rain.

That being the case, teams that have worked with a higher level of downforce could find themselves better-placed on race day and at McLaren it was Hamilton who took that approach while team mate Button, who finished the session eighth (1:14.863) tried a lower downforce set-up initially.

Mark Webber's Red Bull (1:14.523), and the Ferraris of Felipe Massa (1:14.553) and Fernando Alonso (1:14.592) were split by just seven hundredths of a second.

Michael Schumacher's Mercedes (1:14.654) finished the session sixth quickest as Mercedes runs without its Coanda-effect exhaust in Brazil. The team came to the concept later than most and while there is an undoubted downforce boost, they have discovered that the plume is overheating the inside shoulder of the rear tyres and are using Brazil to try to better understand their tyre useage.

Nico Rosberg (1:14.669) was just a hundredth adrift of his team mate, with Romain Grosjean's Lotus (1:14.994) and Paul Di Resta's Force India (1:15.129) completing the top 10 behind Button.